Metal detectors failed to spot weapon stashed on suspect
MAY 6--A judge has ordered a mental evaluation for the Tennessee man who had a 24-inch machete “so deeply tucked into and covered by” a roll of belly fat that metal detectors failed to reveal the weapon’s presence when he was recently booked into a Memphis jail.
Freddrick Johnson, 30, was busted in mid-December for aggravated criminal trespass at a bus station where he was known to “masturbate publicly and otherwise disrupt and cause fear amongst the passengers, patrons and staff,” according to a complaint affidavit.
When Memphis Police Department officers conducted a “thorough pat-down” of Johnson, they found two folding knives, a taser, and multiple bags containing what appeared to be controlled substances (but actually were imitation narcotics).
At the time of his collar, Johnson was serving a three-year probationary term for a late-2017 aggravated assault conviction. Johnson had pleaded guilty to stabbing a man multiple times inside a Memphis homeless shelter. Johnson had been sentenced to three years in prison, but the execution of that sentence was stayed in favor of his supervision by a probation officer. In light of Johnson’s December arrest, prosecutors have petitioned to revoke the suspended sentence he received in the stabbing case.
How the 6' 2", 320-pound Johnson succeeded in smuggling a two-foot machete into the Shelby County jail is detailed in an affidavit sworn by a Memphis police officer.
After Johnson passed through metal detectors inside the lockup, he was patted down by jail personnel who “located an unknown object that had previously been tucked deep underneath a large fat roll.” During initial searches of Johnson, the fat roll “appeared and felt to the touch to be a...
Not once does Robert Mueller mention an investigation into whether Russia interfered with the presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele misinformation.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s March “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” contains a glaring omission: Not once in the 448-page tome does Mueller mention an investigation into whether Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele misinformation.
But Mueller also did not charge Steele with lying to the FBI, or refer a criminal case against Steele to federal prosecutors, as he did when the special counsel uncovered evidence of criminal misconduct unrelated to the 2016 election. Given Mueller’s conclusion that no one connected to the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election, one of those two scenarios must be true—either Russia fed Steele disinformation or Steele lied to the FBI about his Russian sources.
Steele Openly Said He Got Info from RussiansThe Steele dossier, which consisted of a series of memorandum authored by the former MI6 spy, detailed intel purportedly provided by a variety of Vladimir Putin-connected sources. For instance, Steele identified Source A as “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” who “confided that the Kremlin had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”Other supposed sources identified in the dossier included: Source B, identified as “a former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin”; Source C, a “Senior Russian Financial Officer”; and Source G, “a Senior Kremlin Official.” Steele also described a smattering of unlettered sources as a FSB Cyber Operative; a former Senior Intelligence Officer; a Senior Government Figure; “well-placed and established Kremlin source 1”; “well-placed and established Kremlin source 2”; a Kremlin official involved in U.S. relations; a Senior Russian leadership figure; and a Kremlin insider with direct access to leadership.Steele first provided a summary of the Kremlin-supplied “intel” on Trump to the FBI in June or July 2016, when he met with his reputed handler, Rome-based FBI agent Mike Gaeta. In September 2016, Gaeta provided the dossier to agents working on the Russia collusion investigation at the FBI headquarters in Washington D.C.The following month, the U.S. Department of Justice included details from the dossier in an application submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court and obtained a court order to surveil former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. That FISA court order gave the Obama administration and career DOJ and FBI agents accessto Page’s communications with Trump campaign officials prior to Page’s departure.
Using Leaks to Seed News StoriesLeaks propelled the claimed collusion into the news. Steele shared details from the dossier with Michael Isikoff. Citing a “Western intelligence source,” Isikoff reported at Yahoo! News that “Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate and former Russian deputy prime minister,” and discussed...
Voters expressed a preference for judges like Kavanaugh in the Senate Democrats’ Twitter poll.
Judging from a Twitter poll posted by none other than the official Senate Democrats account, there seems to be an appetite for President Trump to appoint more conservative and originalist judges like Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked its Twitter followers if they preferred more judges like Kavanaugh or progressive liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. As of Saturday evening, Kavanaugh is running away as the clear winner of the poll, handily beating Ginsburg by a ratio of 72% to 28%.
Almost 30,000 people have voted so far in the poll, which was first posted to the Democratic Party Twitter account on Friday.
The confirmation of Supreme Court Justices Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch thus far stands as one of the greatest conservative accomplishments of Donald J. Trump’s presidency.
The demand for more judges who will adhere to a contextualist interpretation of the constitution could spell disaster for Democrats. Leading figures on the left have begun to express doubt about the viability of a political strategy that uses the judicial branch to force governmental policy onto the American people, avoiding the...
Edibaldo “Eddie” Durancould run but he couldn’t hide from justice forever.
Arrested last year in his native Puebla, Mexico, following a four-year hunt after savagely beating and raping a Fairfield college student, the 29-year-old Duran stood before a judge Thursday and pleaded guilty to his crime.
In the back of the courtroom his victim’s family sat crying.
Through a Spanish interpreter, Duran pleaded guilty to home invasion and aggravated first-degree sexual assault.
He nodded his head as Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin told Duran he would sentence him to 20 years in prison on July 12.
In the early morning of Sept. 1, 2014, Labor Day, police said Duran broke into the Berkeley Road home of a Sacred Heart University student.
Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Colleen Zingaro told the judge that the victim related she had been asleep when she was awakened by the sound of her bedroom door opening. A man, later identified as Duran, entered the woman’s bedroom and...
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has pardoned a former U.S. soldier convicted in 2009 of killing an Iraqi prisoner, the White House announced Monday.
Trump signed an executive grant of clemency, a full pardon, for former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, of Oklahoma, press secretary Sarah Sanders said.
Behenna was convicted of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone after killing a suspected al-Qaida terrorist in Iraq. He was paroled in 2014 and had been scheduled to remain on parole until 2024.
A military court had sentenced Behenna to 25 years in prison. However, the Army's highest appellate court noted concern about how the trial court had handled Behenna's claim of self-defense, Sanders said. The Army Clemency and Parole Board also reduced his sentence to 15 years and paroled him as soon as he was eligible.
Behenna's case attracted broad support from the military, Oklahoma elected officials and the public, Sanders said. She added that Behenna was a model prisoner while serving his sentence, and "in light of these facts, Mr. Behenna is entirely deserving" of...
House Democrats this week will vote on HR 986, a bill that would harm Americans by leading to fewer health care choices and higher health care costs. It also would undercut what polls tell us 64% of Americans say they want in health care: to build on what is working and fix what isn’t.
The bill would undo the Trump administration’s regulatory relief efforts designed to allow more innovative health care solutions, which provided a small escape hatch from Obamacare’s one-size-fits-all solution. Innovation is key to addressing Obamacare’s failure to offer affordable health care that helps people access the doctors they want to see.
Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, provides states with limited authority to escape the law’s mandates (through a “waiver process”) and test new approaches to undoing some of this damage.
To make incremental progress toward the goal of expanding affordable choices in health coverage, the Trump administration rightly simplified the unnecessarily restrictive waiver process established by the Obama administration.
This change has been critical to helping provide consumers near-term relief—without new federal spending. Heritage Foundation research shows that several states successfully have used a waiver to change market conditions sufficiently that premiums fell for individual health insurance and enrollment expanded—all while protecting the ability of people with high health care costs to...
In 2014 the whole world was scandalized when several videos of the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) showed their members beheading prisoners.
Today, in Venezuela, equally frightening events are taking place, but this time is not ISIS, but the thugs who serve Nicolas Maduro who are beheading those who oppose the regime.
During the last few days a video has spread all over social media, and via WhatsApp groups, in which two thugs loyal to the regime show the heads of two men they have just beheaded as trophies. Among laughter, while showing both heads, they say: “Look, this one and this one were supporting President Guaidó.”
Like ISIS, the intention of these groups of thugs loyal to the regime record and disseminate these terrorist acts to intimidate and send a threat to the followers of President Guaidó. They seek to sow fear among Venezuelans
The video in question is not different from videos of ISIS performing beheadings. The only difference is that the scenario is Venezuela, it has nothing to do with the Middle East and its historical problems with Muslim extremist groups, we are talking about the West, about a country that is located in the Americas, a country that in the 1960s was richer than Norway.
How far will the socialist regime and its thugs go? What else has to happen for the West to stop issuing statements about the situation in Venezuela instead of doing something about it?
While this scary video goes viral on social media, Venezuelan journalist Osmary Hernandez, a CNN En Español correspondent, reports that the tyrant Nicolás Maduro has said: “We will decapitate anyone whose head has to be cut off because...
